Now that the world has trespassed the 3rd week marker of witnessing the events that have transpired at the Fukushima nuclear plant, have you noticed the headline reports from the media comparing apples, oranges AND the potassium levels of bananas to the radiation fallout from Fukushima? I have. And I don’t believe any of it, for I know there’s a grave difference between ionized radiation AND non-ionized radiation, and there is no legitimate comparison to one another. There’s only one saving grace in all the whitewash we’re hearing that is keeping the potential widespread panic to a minimum: The world is receiving small doses in comparison to the people living in Japan right now. However, if the doses get larger in places a large distance from Japan, and the media and governments are telling you to not panic - my advice to you is not to believe the whitewash.

Be Proactive with Your Health

At that point, if the media is still comparing bananas to ionized radiation from a nuclear plant meltdown – prepare yourself and take care of yourself and your loved ones. And you don’t have to necessarily take potassium-iodide for lower levels of radiation. There are many other alternatives. Low chronic levels of ionized radiation do not make them any less dangerous for your long term health. Later down the road when cancer rates go up from the fallout, if you take care of yourself now, you will not be part of the cancer statistic.

Basically, unless there's a major meltdown next door to your house, no one's going to tell you what to do or advise you of the dangers in long-term consequences. As some medical professionals have already been quoted saying in nation-wide news reports: We're all getting cancer anyhow, so why worry?That's shocking news to me honestly, considering there have been entire populations with absolutely no cancer rates throughout history.

Comparing Bananas with Fallout is Ludicrous Science

Why can’t we compare the natural radiation of a banana to nuclear disaster fallout? The answer is simple: A banana contains natural non-ionized radiation in the form of potassium. We obviously need potassium and potassium deficiencies have their own set of health issues. Nuclear fallout is a source of ionized radiation, a very different source of radiation in comparison to natural non-ionized radiation present on terrestrial Earth. Ionized radiation is only a small part of the everyday background levels of radiation we experience.

Moreover, the maximum limit we are told the average individual receives per year is divided into two types of radiation: Natural background radiation (predominately non-ionized) and medical (man-made) radiation (predominately ionized).

Comparing Non-Ionized Radiation to Ionized Radiation Makes More Sense

Terrestrial Earth contains small levels of natural non-ionized radiation, which can even be a resource to humans in the forms of minerals we require, such as potassium. Cosmic radiation is a different story. It emits ionized radiation just like man-made radioactivity. However, Earth has a provision to shield and filter out damaging ionizing cosmic rays and it’s known as the atmosphere and ozone layer. Cosmic radiation is so damaging that pilots receive more ionizing radiation than nuclear plant workers per year.

One of the rare ionizing types of terrestrial radiation on earth comes from Radon, a gas exuded from uranium deposits in the earth’s crust. Radon is not wide spread across the globe, although it is damaging to human health where it is located. Radon remains one of the only ‘natural’ sources of dangerous ionized radiation on Earth - the rest of our background ionized radiation comes from technologies we’ve created.

Atmospheric Earth and Cosmic Radiation

These days, we also receive a larger portion of cosmic radiation partially due to the depletion of the ozone layer. Ironically, back in the 1950s and onward governmental nuclear tests indicated an unintended consequence of detonating nuclear bombs very high above the ground surface. It appeared the high plumes were destroying sections of the ozone layer; one such recognition was Russia’s test of their huge mega 50-megaton nuclear warhead, whereby it was realized a section of the ozone layer was destructed from the warhead testing.

This created yet another undesirable, unintended consequence of deploying nuclear weapons on a large scale, because the Earth requires the atmospheric protection to shield ionizing cosmic rays from potentially raining down. This would obviously not be ideal, as NASA still figures out how to surpass obstacles in traveling around in a space-world dominated by lethal cosmic radiation.

Isn’t it Ionic?

I discovered something ironic (or shall I say ionic?) out of our human search to travel the galaxies, fly planes, deploy nuclear bombs, nuclear medicines and nuclear energy plants – humans desire to seek knowledge and understanding and travel/explore where no man has gone before. There is nothing wrong with exploration, and if I didn’t believe that how would I consider myself and others funky explorers 'urban explorers'?

One thing remains obvious though, and even ionic about all of these considerations: Ionized radiation was not and is not created for life on earth in the quantities we are using it for today: in the forms of nuclear plants, nuclear medicine and x-ray machines and certainly nuclear bombs. Yet, we include these man-made ionized radiation sources as part of what we call natural background radiation. Man-made ionic radiation is and never will be natural, except for the natural components scientists extract from the natural to make another man-made toxic toy to experiment with.

However, you’ll still notice that man-made sources only contribute to maybe 15% of our total background measurements of ionized radiation. This is why we must cautiously question comparisons like radiation levels quoted from Fukushima that are so minute it is like eating a banana. One must employ critical-thinking in these comparisons, unless you care not an iota for your personal health. Ionized radiation is not a large percentage of life on Earth. If it were, we’d be able to survive in an ionized cosmic universe outside of Earth, and we cannot.

That’s why when nuclear bombs were being tested, governments and scientists discovered all the unforeseen consequences of its deployment, and why radiation technicians leave the room while you’re getting a lung x-ray. For that matter, why even ionized radiation of chemotherapy only allows a survivor a limited life-expectancy, and totally ends up wiping out the immune system thereafter. Or, for that matter, why scientific reports continually object to the use of mammograms, and how they cause the cancer we’re trying to avoid by receiving mammograms.

I’ll Take 2 Bananas Please

As much as the nuclear industry would like to whitewash the truth about ionized radiation, so does major portions of the medical community even though radiation treatments show us time and time again they don’t cure anything, but in fact cause more problems. My thesis rests on this premise:

I think we should be comparing nuclear fallout to cosmic space, not bananas. I'll take two bananas please.

Decide for yourself if eating a non-ionized banana is exactly like receiving an ionized dose of chest x-rays, or chemotherapy or radiation fallout from Fukushima, Chernobyl, Hiroshima and countless nuclear experiments carried out for over 50 years on Planet Earth …

Eating one banana per day X 365 days per year =
36 μSv per year dosage (That's what I call 'miniscule' levels of radiation!)

Bananas contain a rare radioactive isotope of potassium, which undergoes three types of beta decay. Just like in bananas, Potassium-40 also exists in the human body, but remains a fraction of the 160 grams of potassium the human body contains. Potassium-40 should not be confused with the other stable isotopes of potassium.

There are three potassium isotopes. K-39 (a stable isotope), the most abundant approximately 93% total; K-41 is next at almost 7% and is also a stable isotope. The radioactive isotope, K-40 has a very low concentration of 0.0118% (miniscule levels of radiation?-you bet!)and has a very long half-life of 1,260,000,000 years. I'll still take two bananas please!

More about Radiation at Radiation 101, our 2-part segment celebrating the yummy banana.

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It is Leaves in the Attics hope that the site and its content will exist on the Internet a long time, long after we are gone. It will take many years to develop all we can about the stories of the abandoned in our societies.

Areas we hope to cover are abandoned places and their people, the undesirables of society, in prisons, asylums, orphanages and contagion hospitals.

Other stories may include ghost towns, whole nations or civilizations, and the stories of the abandoned who called these places home before war or tragedy and environmental devastation took over.

In recent years, many urban exploration sites centralized around urban photographs of abandoned places, which exploded all over the Internet due to a popular reemergence of urban exploration some years ago.

We believe urban exploration is richer than the gathering of images or data about abandoned places, it's also the sharing of the stories about abandoned people and their history.

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